summer festival

It's never too late for a summer festival! If you remember from last year, Ella didn't do all that much for her summer festival. This year was a whole different story. They spent weeks rehearsing and more importantly, she wasn't sick like last year. Hope you enjoy!

Ella's favorite teacher, Fujiwara Sensei. She just left to have her own baby. We are so happy for her but will miss her so much!

Ella with her best friends, just missing LaLa-chan & Jin-kun.

We're so proud of our Japanese baby!

pounding the mochi!

We have been dying for a true mochi experience since we arrived in Japan. We LOVE mochi and have been known to prepare it many different ways (check out other mochi posts here & here). When we interviewed at Ella's school and discovered they held a mochi pounding event we were over the moon! In fact, I'm pretty sure they were creeped out by our excitement. Flash forward to last weekend and we finally got our chance to pound the mochi!

The fathers took turns pounding steamed rice in a large mortar & pestle while the teachers splashed warm water to keep the rice moist. After the rice was pounded into a smooth ball they removed it and placed it on a table of flour. While the kids got to pull the mochi apart and roll it into balls the parents prepared the edible mochi for eating. We made balls of warm mochi covered in soy bean power (which is also amazing on vanilla ice cream). We also dipped warm mochi into (soy?) sauce and rolled it in seaweed. In the end we all sat around the table and feasted on mochi, tea and pickled cabbage.

It was a great experience and as always, the cute babies running around in tiny people aprons and bandanna's made it all the more enjoyable!

Summer Festival

Ella-chan's school hosted a summer festival this weekend for family and close friends. Two great things happened. Ella got to wear her first Jinbeh, a summer style kimono (altered into a tiny person size) AND my co-workers son won a giant (real) live beetle. Gross. I felt so bad, but he seemed pretty happy about it. Most Japanese boys seem very happy about beetles and bugs in general. The older kids did tiny people versions of ceremonial traditions and then everyone played games and won toys, lots of fun toys!

This is Ella's favorite teacher!

baseball extravaganza

What the what?! Just realized we never posted anything about our amazing Japanese baseball game experience. Maybe it's because I was slightly distracted by my ginormous baby belly. Who knows? Anywhoo. . .here it goes!

We had waited a year to finally score tickets on one of the baseball games. We got here pretty late in the season last year and tickets were hard to come by at that point. We decided it best to go through the base tour company for this one, I can't even begin to imagine the mis-adventure that would have become of us trying to buy tickets from some creepy on-line dealer, plus we saved a tone of yen by not taking the train round trip. So, it worked out. Perfect timing too as it was tight around Brandon's birthday and he got to do the ONE thing that he had been constantly talking about since before we moved.

The baseball experience here is fantastic. It's like going to a college football game in the states. Everyone is so into it. Covered in Hawks (Fukuoka's team name) gear from head to toe, wearing scarves and giant claw hands while they fly flags and scream battle songs out of megaphones. Literally, we saw people doing all of that at the same time. There are official cheer sections where both the home and opposing teams have bands that play fight songs. Yes, bands like marching bands. Yes, fight songs like rehearsed cheers. Meanwhile, the announcer is a 6ft tall German radio DJ guy who is screaming super pumped up Japanese to the rest of us and there are concessionaire's running around selling KFC & serving beer out of keg back-packs. Yup, that's about how it went. Like we were inside a giant baseball game show. (The run on sentence is supposed to symbolize the intensity.)

All in all it was a great day, we even got on the jumbo-tron. It turns out they like to display the Americans who also love baseball. . .weird.

Seventh inning stretch balloons. We let them go for the home team, the Hawks.

trash

In case you were suddenly taking the USA's method of Trash Disposal for granted I would like to let you in on the experience here in Japan.

First, everything must be separated and if it is not you get this huge orange ticket on your trash bag! I mean what are you supposed to do with that? Plus, I don't know about any of you but once I deliver my trash to the curb - I don't necessarily go back for it.

Now on to the the separation. Everything must be separated into burnable / un-burnable. After which, it must be separated into plastic, paper, glass, burnable trash like food, aluminum, and so on. Everything must be placed in a special clear city approved trash bag - which you must buy YOURSELF.

Next, there is trash pick up. Each form of trash has a designated trash pick up day (much like the USA) - here at our apartment it 3x a month for burnables and 2x a month for un-burnables (not like the USA). If you put something out on the wrong day - yup, you get an orange ticket - we are still unsure how they enforce these tickets and we are convinced it's mostly so your neighbors can give you the stink eye.

Now, the attention to recycling is something that could be taught to the whole world, I mean it could truly be the future of trash disposal - it's unbelievably amazing. This is just a post to let you all know how completely complicated (and a bit funny, as in funny ackward) it is. It really makes you appreciate the uncomplicated system on your street - one bin for trash, one bin for recycle, your trash comes 2x a week and is picked up with out fail no matter the size, shape, or color of your bag. Have I made you want to give your trash person a fruit basket of love and appreciation yet?? No?? Keep reading.

Wondering what brought this post on? I just witnessed a young girl buy her monthly ( I assume) trash bags, a total cost of Y8,800 (roughly $90.70). That is right, you have to drop a bill just to throw away your trash - and that was for a single lady. One of the only times I will be thankful for daunting city taxes was the moment I saw that transaction.

How do we deal with this? We separate and take our trash to base - in whatever bag we want, what ever day we want.

mochi

We have been partaking in our fair share of mochi eating during this new year. Our new year used to be about eating cakes and candies still holding out from Christmas and securing good luck with something made out of black eyed peas. Now, we proudly indulge in glutinous rice that has been pounded into something like looks like cookie dough. It actually goes with just about everything you might put in cookie dough though, so it's a fair trade. Our favorite way: baked in the toaster oven and then topped with walnuts and honey.

our japanese new year

We took the opportunity to join our friends and visit Sasebo's Temple on New Year's Eve! Here are a few pictures from our experience:

There were booths throughout the temple selling various festival foods. Here is Manami purchasing our taco yaki - Octopus Balls.

The busy, crowded temple. Here we waited in line to throw an offering in the shrine, ring the bell by those giant ropes, and say a prayer.

The year of the tiger!

Manami, Brandon, and I with our fortunes at the temple. Just a warning: they both said babies.

Exchanging arrows. The arrow is a symbol that protects your household from demons throughout the year.

Reggie, Manami, Brandon, & Jewell.

Akamashite Omedeto Gozaimasu!

nabe and fondue

First, I know just what you are thinking. Why would you have fondue?

Last night we went over to our friends house to partake in a lovely, and quite delicious meal experience called - Nabe. This is, in fact - very much like fondue, except that you don't dip things in, you take things out. So in a sense, the only thing fondue like is the giant clay pot resting atop fire in middle of the table.

Our hosts had prepared a feast of mushrooms, tofu (Brandon has embraced the tofu, but I am still coming around to the overall idea), chicken, chicken rolled into balls with vegetables, daikon radish, bean sprouts, cabbage, acorn squash, and since it's the new year - mochi. Mochi is basically rice, that has been pounded and turned into something that best resembles cookie dough, and then ends up flat, hard, and looking like pearl-like sugar candies from the Marie Antoinette days. It is a big new year's tradition. When steamed in Nabe it's gooey and delicious. As for it's other forms, well we don't really know about it's other forms so we couldn't respectfully relate.

All of the above awesomeness is thrown into the giant clay pot in which they are slowly cooked with broth. This can be broth of many flavor's, some of which include; miso, beef, curry(our flavor if the night), and "no flavor". Which I assume means - just water that possibly creates a stock of sorts.

Soon everything starts to look like this:

Once we devoured that - out of bowls of course - came the rice. That is correct, we are just getting to the rice. So, you mix the rice with the broth and top it with cheese creating a delicious, creamy, risotto oozing with flavors from left over pieces of mushroom, diakon, and cabbage. Which I don't really need to explain. If creamy risotto doesn't sound good to you then you don't really deserve to be reading this. Dare I say it? You probably shouldn't be our friend.

Just when you think you can't move your body and you have flash backs to your Mom declaring "kids starving in China" comes dessert.

So fondue.

We have never expressed a love of fondue. Although we did go on a fondue date once, back when Brandon was wooing me with his culinary intuitions which would later effect our future. I mostly loved the apple martinis. However, we managed to receive two fondue sets for Christmas (that's right Lindsey, two!). We took this as a major hint - as to what I don't know - but we prepped a tray of fruit and shortbread cookies and arrived with hands - err bags - full of chocolate. Chocolate, good. Fruit, good. Chocolate dipped fruit, GREAT. So, while we don't plan to be cooking any meals fondue style (why would you when you have Nabe?) we did enjoy the overall result. So don't be surprised if we ever show up at your house with all of the necessary items to make our new favorite dessert. Unless you are Laura, in that case we promise to never show up with a chocolate based dessert, but I can't promise we won't bring the fondue set up just for kicks!

*just to be clear: we loved receiving the fondue gifts. there is nothing more amazing then giving us something we have never experienced before. and we know that is why the loved ones that gave them did. thank you. we loved the experience!

bowling

When my friend Laura told me that bowling was a big deal here, I was slightly skeptical. We met up for dinner and bowling and a classic case of prove Jewell wrong. Not intentionally or anything, but I was proved very wrong.

cool Japanese bowling shoes

When we zoned in after our first game there were trickles of drunk or soon to be drunk 20-somethings, with crazy hair and awesome leather jackets filling up the lanes beside us. Then when we finished the last of our chu-hi's and after our second game there were people waiting for us to leave, because there was quite to line forming in the bowling ally. So, it's true...like Karaoke, bowling is a big deal. Jason and Erica would have been so happy.

Mario themed bowling, too perfect.

Notice the lady mid celebration dance to the right.

ikebana - flower arranging with rules

I accompanied my new friend Laura to an Ikebana class-the Japanese art of flower arranging-today. We had a really good time. The class had a special holiday theme and even though it took place at a place called "America in Sasebo" we were the only Americans in the Coca-Cola covered office. It was pretty great though. The ladies teaching were of course the most sincere people I have ever met. There is a reason why there are Ikebana schools, it is almost a science. Thankfully, due to my college hand drafting and design classes I was able to catch on to placing everything at the correct angles, but the sweet teacher definitely let me know when I was getting a bit too creative and "coloring out side the lines." I really had a great time, and the whole idea is fascinating. It is an art that has been practiced for over 600 years creating harmony between the materials, everything placed in precise technique around the subject piece - which for us was a giant white branch. It is easy to see why gardening is quite the hobby here.

mine is the yellow one. so predictable.

nice packaging

The packaging in Japan is out of control. Everything, even the cookies you buy at the market are presented with honor. It's quite amazing to see, and when you watch the salesperson wrap up your purchase with such care, like it was their own child, it makes you feel really great about buying things.

Here is a collection of photos to show you what we are talking about.